Invasive rats on tropical islands are creating winners and losers among the tiny underwater animals near the bottom of the food chain that inhabit surrounding coral reefs.

Researchers at Lancaster University and the University of Texas say the changes to these marine ecosystems can rewire food chains on the reefs.

Results show that the main mode of seabird nutrients moving up food webs is through fish, which feed both specialised fish-eating predators and more generalised carnivores. As such, when seabird nutrients are added or taken away from ecosystems, there is a rewiring of how energy travels up food webs, and a reconfiguration of larger fish communities.

Researchers from Jiangsu University have identified Pm72, a new powdery mildew resistance gene from the Iraqi wild einkorn wheat accession PI 427741. Genetic analysis showed that the accession carries two dominant resistance genes, including PmNCA6 previously identified on chromosome arm 7AL. Pm72, located on chromosome arm 6AL, provided resistance against all ten powdery mildew isolates tested and remained effective after being transferred into hexaploid wheat through interspecific hybridization. The findings establish Pm72 as a promising resource for breeding wheat varieties with broad and effective resistance to powdery mildew.

Wild seabirds that face high energy demands during the breeding season go on to migrate farther and raise more chicks the next year, but at a cost to their own survival. An international team, led by researchers from Nagoya University, raised the energy cost of flight for some birds and tracked them through the next year of their annual cycle. The researchers introduce a concept called "energetic flexibility" and offer rare experimental evidence for how the costs of one season carry over to shape the next. The study appears in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Scientists studying saber-toothed cats which became trapped and died in the La Brea Tar Pits have found that these animals had a high range of spinal deformities, including serious developmental abnormalities and widened holes in their vertebrae which indicate the presence of spinal nerve tumors. These tumors are extremely rare in humans and modern animals; in humans they’re caused by a particular genetic mutation. Scientists think that as the saber-toothed cat population shrank, fewer potential mates were available and pathogenic genes became more common. The painful, disabling tumors would have made it hard to hunt, which could explain why the saber-toothed cats were scavenging for easy prey in the tar pits. 

Kyoto, Japan -- As close relatives of humans, chimpanzees had sometimes been used in biomedical experiments. They were instrumental in the identification of the hepatitis C virus: the then mysterious pathogen was artificially injected into chimpanzees for study, leading to its eventual identification in 1989. Since then, treatments for humans have advanced and hepatitis C can now be nearly cured with medication. However, the same treatment has not been extended to the chimpanzees.

In 2022, a team of researchers from Kyoto University found that chimpanzees infected with hepatitis C had experienced negative health effects and shorter lifespans. This time, in a collaboration with Kumamoto University, the team was determined to eliminate this virus in chimpanzees residing at Kumamoto Sanctuary, a research facility of Kyoto University’s Wildlife Research Center. The sanctuary is home to several chimpanzees who were once used in medical experiments by multiple organizations in Japan, and is a place where they can spend the rest of their lives being cared for.

"Prioritizing chimpanzee health and welfare is the number one reason for conducting this study," says first author Satoshi Hirata. "We felt that it is our responsibility to do whatever we can to improve their condition."

Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), which affects about 30% of the population worldwide, is driven in part by excessive hepatic de novo lipogenesis (the production of fatty acids within the liver). In mice, the minor intron splicing factors ZRSR1 and ZRSR2 can influence hepatic lipid metabolism by controlling the processing of Insig transcripts. Whether these proteins also regulate metabolism independently of their canonical splicing function has remained unclear.

Colorado State University researcher Jessica Metcalf is studying foul-smelling substances to figure out what attracts the New World screwworm to its favorite meal – open wounds – so she can develop better lures for trapping this serious threat to the livestock industry.

The low endosomal escape efficiency of endocytosis-based delivery has become a key barrier restricting therapeutic biomacromolecule applications in biomedicine. A review published in Biomedical Analysis highlights emerging non-endocytic transmembrane delivery strategies that bypass conventional cellular uptake pathways and enable direct cytosolic delivery of proteins, nucleic acids, and gene-editing tools. Led by Dr. Yang Liu from Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, the review summarizes recent advances in physical, biomimetic, and bioengineered delivery platforms and discusses their potential for gene therapy, drug delivery, and cellular engineering.